Originally Posted by rune_74
I guess I need to try playing it again….I didn't get very far into it before qctually finding it boring. To me at least, it wasn't one of the best games in the last 15 years.

Yeah it had some really great aspects about it but the things that bugged me really bugged me. Also while I appreciated the significant and non-patronizing decision to have significantly diverging plot paths for the first 3/4 of this did nescessitate a frustrating railroad switch station feeling to many of those choices. Granted that is probably a trade off required to make the consequences of those choices truly meaningful and the stories that followed feel (for a while at least) almost unprecedentedly divergent. Still, it did have me wondering how Geralt could have survived without the diametrically opposed fanatics helpfully giving him the only options he seems able to seriously consider. It was not as bad in that respect as Dragon Age II was though at least.

A failing I suppose that should not be overly harped on because it is common to many story driven RPGs did seem to bother me quite a bit in the Witcher 2. Perhaps it was because so much of the other aspects of the story and characters succeeded in immersing me but the obliviousness of characters - Geralt in particular - the untrustworthy nature of a character they're talking to could be rather immersion breaking. A couple times I found myself googling to see if I had encountered a bug because they seemed to be no way to confront the clear betrayer, confirm their betrayal, or avoid cheerfully letting them betray you but still advance the plot. Geralt unfortunately seems to have become somewhat thicker since the first game and only ever recognizes such betrayal after it is staring him in the face and shouting "muhahaha." It just seemed so incongruous with how competent the character was most of the time.

The potential for retreading the same area for the umpteenth time and fighting the same re-spawning monsters approached console JRPG levels of silly. At least they didn't come in Dragon Age 2 style suicide waves; those made me wonder why the city guard didn't just patrol the rooftops and take care of 90% of the city's crime problem.

I guess frustration is something you should expect when games take risks in how they do things. At least with the Witcher many of the risks paid of big time. But yeah the ways in which they didn't pay off (like the interface that sometimes reminded me of scenes from the movie Brazil) make me a little cooler in my endorsement of it than some. Still, the sequel could be the best game in 15 years if they fix what The Witcher 2 got wrong and expand on what it got right. Most better overall games don't show that kind of potential.